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Sunday, December 31, 2006

Tomorrow morning, I'll get to participate in a yearly tradition in our Master's swimming group: the year in 50's (fortunately, we cheat a bit and do 107 fifties, not 2007!). It's a big challenge (we do them on an interval of :45!!), and a long ways to swim, but full of good company and the knowledge that we're all still here, still swimming, a year later than the last time we got together to do this crazy thing. All over the city and the world as well, groups of cyclists and runners, walkers, scuba divers, unicyclists, snowboarders, skydivers, and members of every other sport out there will be doing something similar: challenging themselves to take that sport one step further, get up on New Year's morning and do something just a little bit harder than you would choose to do on your own. I've participated in a few of these rituals: "chilly hilly" rides, midnight scuba dives, and probably the most dangerous: hungover skydiving. And tomorrow I'll also participate in the Virtual Tri-Geek Challenge triathlon as well. Upon reflection, I think what it all boils down to is a way to shout "I'm alive" in a big, bold way. To state with our bodies that we're still here, still kicking, still celebrating our ability to move our bodies, smile, talk with our friends, give ourselves a kick in the butt.

This year, there will be a face missing from our New Year's lineup at the swimming pool though. A friend, Jane, was struck by a logging truck on a bike ride with friends in late May. She was an Ironwoman extraordinaire, qualifying for Kona many times over, and someone who helped me many times with training tips and advice in preparing for my first Ironman. She was also a gifted scientist whose papers on nutrition and passion for her work were beneficial to so many people. But more than anything I remember about her, it's her smile that sticks with me. Like the Cheshire Cat, it's the one thing left when all else has disappeared. I will miss hearing her jokes and laughter as we get ready in the lanes, and hearing her stories in the hot tub afterwords. The road she was killed on is one I ride on regularly, and the many times I've passed that one spot on the road this summer have brought her to my mind, as well as the dangers that all of us who cycle on roads with trucks and cars face.

So as I'm swimming tomorrow, I'll be remembering Jane, and wishing her well on her journey, wherever she might be. Her death underlines the fact that what we have is today, now, this moment. The hand entering the water, the head turning to breathe, the smiles with friends at the end of the lane, that's what will exist on New Year's morning. Since we don't know if we will be here tomorrow, we must celebrate the fact that we are here today. And that's what I will be doing. I am here.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

In my personal life, 2006 will always be the year of the Ironman. I may do other Ironman races in the future, but this year was defined by my first Ironman, and the Ironman defined me in ways that these intense moments in our lives have a way of doing. As with childbirth, or climbing a mountain, or any activity that takes you to the limits of your most elemental self, the Ironman has a way of teaching you things about yourself that were previously unrevealed.

Today I was raking leaves (again! see again the size of my leaf pile, only now slightly diminished after days and days of moving leaves) and after an hour or so my hands started to get blistered and my shoulders sore. But I now have the knowledge that if I just come out and do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, then I'll be able to go longer and harder every time and eventually it will feel easy to move leaves for as long as I want to. Just like by November of this year, I could jump on my bike and ride a hundred miles, an inconceivable distance to most people, without much more thought than "Do I have enough Powerbars to last me a few hours?"

The Ironman taught me that I could push through fatigue, pain, and hunger to accomplish the goals that are important to me. In fact, it taught me that I could find an inner place that would take me through hours and hours of unanticipated pain, and come out the other side with barely a memory of what I'd been through, and a smile on my face to boot. More than almost anything I've ever done, it taught me about the depths of my spirit: dedication, strength, focus, endurance. It's not just a physical sport, but a mental challenge that cannot be overestimated.

A year ago, I had just registered for the race, and eleven months seemed like an eternity to become prepared. A year ago, I didn't know if my body could do what it failed to do fifteen years ago: make it to the starting line, healthy and ready to go. Beyond that, make it through the swim, the bike, the run, and become an Ironman. Now I know, and the knowledge will be with me always. As we move through the last few hours of 2006, I'm very grateful to have had this experience. If I stay awake long enough to see the New Year turn tomorrow night, I'll raise a glass of champagne to all of you out there, striving to find the place where your spirit shines.

Friday, December 29, 2006

I don't know what it is about this time of year that makes us crave new things, new ideas, new approaches. It's no coincidence that many cultures have major gift-giving festivities in the darkest months of the winter, and that the gym and pool are suddenly full of people making a fresh start on their fitness plans. Me, this is about the time of year that I have a little fun with things. Yep, you can take the grrrl out of the punk rock band, but you can't take the punk rock out of the grrrl. See I'm not allowed to have "unnatural" colored hair where I work, but I have two weeks off right now, and with the amount that I'm in and out of chlorinated pools, I know that this lovely New Year's color will only last about 10 days or so. Plus, it matches my purple Pearl Izumi biking shorts, and you just can't beat having color-coordinated hair and shorts. My daughter's hair will stay purple a bit longer, but one of the nice things about homeschooling is there's no one to get fussed about it except for her parents, and well, we don't care!

And yeah, I updated my blog while I was at it, adding a few photos and some pizazz. And now, since my kids are both playing at a friend's house and it's actually not raining and not freezing either, I think I'll head out for a little pre-New Year's brick workout.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Boy do I feel like a dingbat. All this time, I've been trying to figure out how to make the titles on my blog posts actually look like titles. I've tried various html codes, basically overengineering the whole problem. It's a checkbox in the blog Settings. Yes, a checkbox. One that I, with all of my software engineering background, apparently couldn't find for way too long. Yes, ten years of working in the software industry and there you have it, I can't find a simple checkbox.

But now rest assured, I have Discovered The Checkbox, and all is well. I am now retrofitting all of my previous blog entry titles so that they are actual titles, which should make everything more tidy and searchable, and make me look like less of a bloog and more of a blogger.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Trying to find a time to go out for a run today was a bit like jumping rope. You know when your friends are twirling the rope and you're standing to the side, ready to go. You watch the rope go around once, twice, maybe you'll jump in, but it's not quite right. Finally you just have to go for it.

In the course of a few hours today we had sun, rain, fog, hail, drizzle, more sun, more hail... so finally I just jumped in with both feet and went out for a run. The toe is still holding steady, so I bumped up to 3 miles today (after a 2 miler last week), and so far it's still feeling okay. Then it was a couple of hours of raking leaves (remember my monster leaf pile!) and tonight I'll swim a few thou, and call it a day. The weather is supposed to be like this all week, so with any luck I may even get a bike ride or two in, if I jump at just the right time.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

For quite some time, I've had one of those older cell phones, you know the kind without a camera, or any other bells and whistles. No bluetooth, no downloaded ring tones, no games. My kids think my cell phone, as compared to those of their friends' parents is "old tech". Well, it happened. I finally dropped it one too many times (not a few of them have been from my bike, while I was riding) and it stopped working very well. So I braved the mall this week (no small task due to the fact that A) it was Christmas week, and B) I hate malls) and got myself a new phone. And this one has a camera.

Now I'm a photography nut, in case you hadn't noticed by the fact that I'm usually including only barely relevant photographs with my blog entries. But I've been hampered by the fact that I don't really have a camera that I can take with me all the time. Both of my digitals are way too big to carry in a pocket, and I've never bought a small point-n-shooter, most likely out of the kind of camera snobbery that comes when you get a degree in Art. I cut my teeth in a black and white darkroom, after all.

But now, I have a camera in my phone, on hand at all times. The time I think I'll really enjoy it is on my bike. There have been so many times I've wished to capture the things I've seen from my saddle. There was the time I came around a corner on a foggy autumn day to find an old airplane in someone's yard, wings rising out of the mist like it was floating in mid-flight. Or the small fawn by the side of the road, recently dispatched in an encounter with a car. But it had fallen in such a way that the leaves behind it made a perfect set of angels wings. All of these images are stored in my head, and nowhere else. But now I'm truly dangerous for I have my phone.

Today's rainbow is from an hour's ride out into the countryside behind the hill that our house is on. It was unseasonably warm (I rode in shorts, in December!), but half of the sky was clouded with rain while the other side was all blue sky. This rainbow split the difference, and was far more vivid than my tiny phone camera could ever capture. But still, I'm glad to be able to save at least a small fascimile of the beautiful ride I had today.

Friday, December 22, 2006

As the comedienne Rita Rudner said: “It takes six months to get in shape and two weeks to get out of shape. As soon as you know this, you can stop being angry about other things in life and only be angry about this.” So here we are launching into the holidays, a time of not only eating, drinking, and being merry, but cold weather and dark, short days. Clearly, a time when it's easy to fall out of shape.

Yesterday was the Solstice, and we celebrated the fact that the sun will be returning to us, a little at a time, each day until summer. But for now the days barely start at 8:00 am and darkness is falling before 5:00. Finding the time during the busy middle of the day to get that exercise in can be daunting, and yet we have parties to go to and platters of cookies beckon. Luckily, like the fat squirrels outside my window, we athletes have a secret. We know that even if we pack a pound or so on here or there over the winter, it won't be staying put come training time. It won't accumulate, like a slow snowdrift, burying us in layers and layers that hold us to the ground. Before long (possibly even before the the last scraps of wrapping paper have been all picked up and thrown in the recycling bin), we'll be hitting the pavement, the pool, the trainer, or the weight room. We can't help it, our bodies just don't feel right without it anymore.

Tomorrow, we're heading over the mountain pass to some cabins where we'll spend Christmas with my mom, sister, and brother-in-law. I've packed up all of the warm coats, jackets, gloves, and boots. We'll probably go tubing, rent snowshoes, or hit the slopes, as well as build snowmen and throw a few snowballs. I won't have time to train, but it will be an active, busy holiday all the same.

So before I go, to all of my triathlete friends, have a wonderful holiday! Eat, drink (swim, bike, run) and be merry!

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Training on the go: Bike to work at the pool. Sneak in 1700 yards after coaching. Bike home. It's our day to pick up milk from our local dairy guy, bike with kids out to pickup location on this crazy contraption (Bike Friday Tandem, with Burley Piccolo tag-a-long attached). Bike home, dropping one kid off at friend's house. Spouse gets home early just as we roll back in, sun is still shining so lace up running shoes and head out the door. Run 2.5 (still taking it easy on the formerly injured foot), pick up kid from friend's house and run home together. Totals: 1 mile swim, 13 mile bike, 2.5 mile run - kind of like a sprint triathlon in stages through the day, with kids attached. All in an Ironmom day.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

I just got a massively intimidating letter from the Ironman corporation's attorneys (all 37 of them listed on the top of the letter) ordering me to cease and desist from selling Ironmom shirts (though I will point out to them that I only created the shirt for me and have made exactly $0 selling shirts.) Apparently, though Ironmom is not trademarked, (nor is Ironskillet, Wrought Iron Railings, my Iron Tablets that I take for anemia or many other uses of the word Iron, I would point out), it is "confusingly similar" to the word Ironman and therefore I cannot have my Ironmom shirt for Christmas.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Isn't it funny how you can swim, bike, and run 'til the cows come home, but spend an hour raking leaves and it's like you've never worked out in your life! I'm so sore today after moving massive (and I do mean massive) leaf piles around our property. We're on a long-term plan to become more self-sufficient as a family, raising our own chickens and gardening. I mulched all the garden beds with the leaves from our killer pile (courtesy of our city's leaf pickup department) and started covering the ivy in the back forty (well, back one-third is more like it). My daughter and I cleaned out the chicken coop, and I hauled forty-pound bags of poultry feed and bricks of cedar shavings down the hill (the wiry 70-year-old gent at the Feed-n-Seed shop tossed them around like they were made of air.)

For sure, our ancestors were no ninnies. Which is probably why in all the old family photos standing next to their whitewashed farmhouse they look as wiry and tough as Feed-n-Seed Store Man (even my great-great-grandma looks like she could whup ya with one hand tied behind her back.) And they didn't need an Ironman to get that way. In some ways, it seems like modern sports are a searching for the activity that used to fill everyday life. When you had to milk your own cow, grow the hay to feed it, and churn the butter, you didn't really need to go run seven miles to feel healthy and strong. More likely, you look forward to the end of the day when you get a few minutes to put your butt down in the rocking chair.

Still, at the end of my hard day's work, it felt good to get in the pool and swim some yards, stretching all those tired muscles in my back and shoulders. But I didn't push it, that's for sure.

Monday, December 18, 2006

I just did this with my camera, but here's a really grainy copy of my Ironman finish photo. I'll have to see if I can get a better digital photo than this one! It doesn't look like you can order a digital copy without ordering a full set of all of them, which is a bummer for us digital folks. If any of you knows different, let me know. All I want is to put it in my Christmas letter!

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Today's forecast is for happiness with increasing mobility, slight chance of stiffness in the morning and plenty of taking it easy.

Yes, the toe is really and truly well. Theory #2 seems to be proving correct, although I'm still going to give it some time and let it heal up. I did go ice skating with my daughter yesterday and had a blast - it didn't hurt at all (but oh my thighs are paying for it today!!). And I'm still cycling and swimming, but I've put running on hold for awhile.

I went and swam today with my Masters guys, which I haven't done in at least six months. It's so much more fun to swim a workout with other people, I've really missed it! I swam behind The Barge, one of our lane's biggest and fastest guys, and managed to keep up my mantra "follow the bubbles, don't lose the bubbles" through a set of 21 hundreds on the 1:30. Phew! The last hundred we did for time, and even with my spastic one-footed kick and one-foot flip turns, I managed to turn a 1:11. I'm thinking that all that solo swimming as well as increasing my pulling time leading up to Ironman (and because of my foot, post-Ironman as well) has given me a lot more upper-body in my stroke. I'm predicting that as soon as I can kick with both feet, I'm going to be faster than I've been in decades. I'm thinking I might tackle the State Masters swim meet this spring maybe. Haven't swam in a swim meet in 20 years or so, it should be entertaining at the least!

Thursday, December 14, 2006

After the Ironman, my family really just wanted to spend our last day in Florida together, so we hung out by the pool and walked on the beach, and I just sort of skipped the awards banquet. Afterall, Ironman had all of my time for the last 6 months, and I figured my family deserved at least one carefree workout-free day in Florida together. I had all but forgotten that I entered as an Athena as well (it was almost a year ago when I filled out the registration), so I didn't realize that I probably placed in the category until I got this 2nd place plaque in the mail today. I'm glad I made the decision to race as an Athena, and not just because I got this cool little shellacked bit of wood and metal, but because I think there are a whole lot of women out there who hear the words "150 pounds" and think "fat". Or think that if they weigh that much, they could never be an athlete.

I remember being at the airport the day after the Ironman. My husband was having a bit of a laugh at my expense, because I was probably the only Ironman in the airport not wearing the finishers shirt. Not really because I didn't want people to know I was a finisher (as if the limp wasn't a dead giveaway), but more because I managed to get a huge shirt instead of a medium, and, well, I have some aethetic complaints about the grey-and-orange motif. So there I was with my two kids, just looking like your average mom-at-the-airport, and all the Ironmen around me were telling their stories to each other. They all looked buffed, athletic, and about 8% bodyfat. As I listened in on the stories, I gradually realized that I was faster than almost all of them in the race. Not that time matters, really, when you're becoming an Ironman. It doesn't (unless of course you're Carole Sharpless getting chased down by Hillary Biscay and nabbing 2nd by a dozen or so seconds). But it was one more reminder that body size and body type are no indicator of athleticism (I don't know how many times I have to get slapped in the head with this before it sinks in). I'm an Ironman. I'm an Athena. I'm an athlete!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Now I know that you people out there in blogland are probably tired of reading about my Toe. You're probably saying to yourselves "It's a toe already, get over it!" To which I say you have no idea how important one toe is. Really. When you can't run (and you triathletes should understand that one!), can't swim much, can't bike on anything but a trainer, when you can't walk to the store, can't stand in the kitchen baking pancakes for your kids, well you start to realize just how important one toe can be.

Heck, you can't even have a little marital fun without The Toe becoming a problem. Think on this: you can't kneel, you can't lie on your stomach without hanging your foot off the edge of the bed. That limits things just a little. And then, if you manage to successfully block out the cattle-prod-like zings of pain that occasionally just randomly shoot through The Toe, and get into things a little bit, you come to a moment of toe-curling ecstasy and WHAM, The Toe sends you a pain message that causes you to catapult your partner across the room and clutch your foot in agony. Hardly conducive to happy marital relations.

But that's just regular old pain with a lowercase "p" that I've been living with since the Ironman. Yesterday in my karate class, I got to experience PAIN with all capital letters. We were trying a new sparring technique in which my partner was supposed to step past my right foot, except that she stepped right into it, clubbing The Toe with the side of her foot in full swing. Blammo, there was a Pain Explosion that almost knocked me out. Now, I'm no stranger to pain. For one thing, I've had two babies: 'nuff said. For another, I've broken numerous bones, had hundreds of stitches, and dislocated a few random limbs. Other than my twice-yearly trip to the dentist where he has to peel my fingertips out of his chair, I more or less laugh in the face of pain.

But this was like a pain bomb went off in my head, totally unbelievable. I instantly felt like I was going to both throw up and pass out at the same time. My sensei asked me if I was okay and I couldn't even talk. My friend Kay said that my entire mouth turned green, in the way that it does when people suffer a serious shock and are going to lose consciousness (and she, being a nurse, would know this). I valiently struggled to not barf in the dojo and eventually managed to say that I was okay. For about two hours after this incident, my foot hurt bad.

Then, to my utter amazement, it all went away. Totally and completely away. My foot doesn't hurt. The Toe has been demoted to just a toe again. I swam 4250 yards last night and kicked. Just before swimming, I told Kay in the locker room that I had two theories. One was that the Pain Explosion temporarily knocked out all of my pain receptors and I was just experiencing a brief reprieve from the sensations down there. The second theory was that, contrary to what my doctor thought after looking at the x-rays, my foot really was dislocated after all, and my karate partner managed to kick it back into place.

At this, Kay said one of her classic Kay lines: "I think we should always go with the theory that we like the best, even if it's not based on any reality at all." Except you've got to say it with her lovely south-ish of England accent and awesome laugh, which makes almost everything coming out of her mouth sound extremely witty. Seriously, she could read you a shopping list and you'd smile or outright bust up. So that's why I swam and actually kicked, hell and bad toes be damned. But the real kicker is that this morning it Still Feels Great!

So keep your fingers crossed that my second theory is it, and that this is the end of my Toe troubles for good. If not, well at least I'll enjoy my reprieve.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

I was at the pool on Friday and it's up on the wall already: the New Year's workout. It's something I usually look forward to with only small amounts of trepidation, our Master's team always does the year in 50's, so this year it will be 107 fifties, leaving on the :45 (a few swimmers lobbied when we rolled over from 99 to 100 to only do the single digits, but somehow that didn't stick). The bummer is, this is the first year I'm not sure if I'm going to make it. The Toe (I'm giving my injury a capital letter, now that it's decided to make itself at home for awhile) is sitting here flaring like it's got electrical current running through it every now and then, and I still can't kick much when I swim, not to mention my ridiculous single-leg flip turns.

I tried my hand at about 40 fifties on the :45 all by myself, and managed to come in to the wall in time to gasp a few breaths before heading out again. Not Good. I had to alternate between swimming with only one foot kicking (an exercise in ridiculousness if I do say so), and using the pull bouy. As I probably mentioned before, I'm not much use with a pull buoy, much of my formerly reasonable stroke was in my legs. I think I'll have to pick a place at the back of the pack, preferrably behind a very nice swimmer we have knicknamed "The Barge" for his lovely draft, and hope that the pull from enough big boys in front of me just sucks me along.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Cool New Coaching Toys

The pool where I coach just got a video camera system, something I've been wanting to use with my swimmers for awhile. If I had a digital video camera myself, I would've brought one in to use, but we sunk our money into a digital SLR this year (which I am, of course, overjoyed over!).

I'm really excited to try this out, since it's often hard to explain to swimmers exactly what they're doing and what it looks like. This will be really useful. Of course, I'd love to get my hands on something really sophisticated like this Dartfish system that Drew posted about on his blog , but in the meantime, I'm just happy being able to show people what their arms are actually doing, as opposed to what they think they're doing.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Okay, so maybe running wasn't such a good idea after all. My foot hurts, and now my legs hurt too. Geez, ya'd think a gal who could run an Ironman without too much trauma could run one mile without her legs hurting like someone in a bad mob movie just got done hitting them with baseball bats or something. Maybe it's latent trauma re-surfacing or something, but I swear my legs feel worse than they did after the Ironman or my marathon last year! Maybe I ran on them funny in an effort to baby my injured toe, I don't know. I just know it's Not A Good Thing when you can't go down a flight of stairs without looking like your grandmother.

On the other hand, being as I now have to Sit Some More (otherwise known as resting and healing), I went to go see the new James Bond movie this week with my husband and son. I tell you what, looking at this sure took my mind off my hurt foot. I mean, look at those trapezius muscles, of course. Any swimmer would envy those, for sure. Yep. Seriously though, I give a double-thumbs-up to the new Blonde Bond. A much more physical Bond, one who definitely does not look silly or like a total wimp while throwing punches at the bad guys.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

I pretty much blew my triathlon budget this year with IMFL and all the accompanying expenses (who knew you could eat hundreds of dollars worth of pre-packaged gooey sugar!) but I created a couple of cool triathlon chick designs and I think at the very least I am going to treat myself to an Ironmom shirt! Yes, that's my shameless advertising plug there, though I could really not give a rat's arse if anyone else buys them, I just made them so I could get one! There's not enough fun triathlon wear for us girlz out there as it is.

Monday, December 04, 2006

One whole month without running. It's one month to the day since Ironman, and voila! I ran! My toe's feeling better, and I made it through my karate belt test this weekend without further injury so I think I'm good to go. Now I just need to remind myself to take it slow and easy, one mile at a time.

It's almost like not having run at all, it's almost ludicrous how quickly fitness in any one sport can disappear - the old "use it or lose it" adage seems to hold fairly well. So now, after one mile pounding the pavement, my legs are... well... sore! But it was a great day for it, the sky clouded over and held a tiny bit of heat to the earth, there were great flocks of geese in the sky, and I had loaded U2's Achtung Baby onto my iPod, perhaps one of the best whole albums ever recorded. Their line "If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel" especially resonated with me today. I've done my penance, now it's time to get off of my knees and back onto my feet.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

My husband has been my constant companion for fourteen years, almost all of which I have done triathlons. Yet even with trucking me around to races, watching me train, and standing by the finish lines, he has only been tempted to try a race once. That was about five years ago when he did the Blue Lake Sprint distance tri, and that has been his first and last triathlon. I'm sure it didn't help that what was supposed to be a half mile swim got mismarked into the Olympic course and came out at almost a mile, and that swimming is his least favorite sport among the three. More than one sprint triathlete came out of the water sputtering and cursing that morning! But it's just never been his thing. Until now.

The other day, I caught him watching the St. Croix half-Ironman on TV (or, as we now apparently call it, an Ironman 70.3 - ah, marketing!). Then he was surfing on the Ironman website, looking at 70.3 races. And suddenly over dinner one evening it was "I think I might like to do a half-Ironman for my 45th birthday". The Ironbug bites.

I'm not sure exactly why all of the lovely Olympic and Sprint Tri's here in the Pacific Northwest have never beckoned to him, but suddenly the prospect of going over twice that distance does. Perhaps it's the gigantic challenge of it all, or watching the throngs at IMFL, the race week enthusiasm, or just having a big goal out there to mark an age milestone (for his 40th birthday, we biked a 100 miles to the coast with a group of friends), but all of a sudden he's in the pool a couple of times a week and talking of biking back and forth to work when the weather warms.

I'm ecstatic of course. For one, because I've always longed to share this sport together (we met when we both were deeply immersed in skydiving, something that's been impossible to keep up as parents, but was great fun to do together), and for another because it'll be nice to have him as a training partner some of the time, and also maybe he'll get what drives me a little better, especially once he tackles the 70.3. And of course, when the Ironbug bites me again, he'll understand!

Friday, December 01, 2006

We've had an interesting amalgam of weather this week: sleet, snow, hail, rain, sunshine, more sleet... Needless to say, I haven't been outside on my bike, and my stack of DVDs from the library is getting thin. I did hear that a local bike store has indoor BYO Trainer workouts in the evenings, and I might have to go do that just to keep from going insane! But today, the sun is shining and I have a free hour while my daughter is ice skating. I think I'll throw on every available leg and arm warmer and head out the door, remembering the warm days and endless miles of summer...